Queen by Alex Haley

if simply, furnished. There was a large
        ballroom, with columns grained in imitation of marble, wide-board,
        immaculately polished floors, and intricate Oriental rugs. The house had
        been the home of George Washington when Philadelphia had been the
        capital, and it amused James, and gave him no small sense of triumph,
        that he lived in what had been a presidential palace. Several of the
        staff were black, and James assumed that they must be slaves until Mrs.
        Bankston disenchanted him.
        I 'They are free men," Mrs. Bankston sniffed. "I do not hold with
        slavery."
        Mrs. Bankston didn't hold with a lot of things. She ruled her staff with
        a rod of iron, and didn't hold with her niggers getting uppity.
        "They are prone to it," she sniffed. "Because they are so recently from
        the jungle, and civilization has gone to their heads. "
        She didn't hold with her gentlemen guests receiving ladies in their
        rooms. She didn't hold with drunkenness; she didn't hold with atheists;
        she didn't hold with taxes.
        "I had to board up many of my windows," she sniffed. "Because the
        property tax is based on the size and number Of one's windows. It is
        iniquitous. It is atheistic heresy to tax God's daylight."
        She didn't hold with politicians, who were intent on accumulating the
        powers of monarchy unto themselves, and were
    60 ALEX HALEY'S QUEEN
     
    building palaces in the dismal swamp that was Washington, the new capital.
        "I bless my cotton socks that the good Lord sent Thomas Jefferson to us,"
        she sniffed. "He is a man of the people, unlike that Mr. Adams, who wanted
        to be king."
        She didn't hold with the fact that the new president kept slaves on his
        estate in Virginia, but forgave him for it.
        "He is good to his niggers," she sniffed, and then lowered her voice. "Much
        too good to one of them, if rumors are to be believed, and even had
        children by her, if you take my meaning. "
        She didn't hold with Indians, who were nothing but bloodthirsty savages,
        she didn't hold with anyone who lived in New York, which was a cesspool of
        vice, and she didn't hold with New Englanders.
        "They believe that God speaks only to them, and that only they know what is
        ordained for the country," she sniffed. "They are plain folk, but arrogant
        in their humility. The sooner we are rid of them the better. "
    Most of all, she didn't hold with the British.
        "They have never forgiven us for trouncing them," she sniffed. "They regard
        us as disobedient children. Mark my words-they will try to smack our
        naughty posteriors for it
    yet. "
        James understood that well, because he remembered his own father, but some
        of the things Mrs. Bankston didn't hold with confused him. He went to his
        brother John for clarification,
     
    John laughed. "It is the great flaw of equality," he explained. "For it
    means that everyone believes that only they know what is best for the
    others."
        The United States, he told James, was not one country but a collection of
        independent, sovereign countries, which had forgotten their differences and
        banded together to defeat the British. Once they had achieved their aim,
        they were not quite sure what to do next. They had a federation but no
        common purpose anymore, other than an idea. Some wanted a return of the
        monarchy in some form; others wanted a true democracy; some wanted to break
        away from the loose federation
        BLOODLINES 61
     
    and form confederations of smaller numbers of states, or go it alone. The
    states fought and bickered and argued among themselves, and somehow held
    fast. Many in New England, with Boston as its capital, were